Grade disparity between sections at UIUC

Introduction

One of the most frustrating situations to find yourself in is a course
where all of your friends are in the "easier section". For most
of us, it feels like this happens all of the time. As part of a
growing set of GPA visualizations, students in the Spring 2017 section of
CS 205: Data Driven Discovery
took the deepest dive into the GPA data to date to find out whether the
perception of disparity of grades between different sections is true or not.

Using GPA data from the most recent five semesters (Fall 2014 through Fall 2016,
including summers/winters), we found the distribution of every section/instructor group
within every course. For example, Calculus I (MATH 221) has been taught by
eight different primary instructors recently. We found the following distributions:

Legend

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(Highest Avg. Grades)
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(Lowest Avg. Grades)

Instructors with average grades significantly lower than the
average grade for a course have increasing red hues.

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Middle50%-tile

Next12.5%-tile

Next7.5%-tile

Final 5%(95%/5%)

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The darkest shading shows the median grades in a course, with each
ligher showing grades further from the median.

External Impact

In the preparation of this work, we found other factors — including the time of day of the lecture and
if the course was in-person or online — also have a major contribution to the final grades in a
course. We hope others will dive deeper into these factors in the future.

Find Your Course

Type the subject for any course at UIUC (eg: CS for Computer Science) to
find the disparity of grades between different sections of a course:

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